Wednesday, November 24, 2010

piranha
piranha is exactly what it is supposed to be, a mindless flick about creatures that swim and hunt actors and extras whom were paid to act like they are taking their roles seriously without taking their roles seriously. i enjoyed it very much.

reign of assassins
cool love story, could have been a perfect wuxia picture if the well choreographed action scenes weren't marred by confusing hollywood-style fast cut editing.

red
what the expendables was to action movies, is what this movie is, to expendables (think a retirement escapade for retirees retiring from retirement homes). add to that a twist - other than bruce willis as the anchor, none of his assembled team members in the story were played by action flick mainstays. instead, the roles were filled by mostly veteran character actors. so naturally the casting was near perfect. in fact, i don't think the whole film would have worked without their collective charisma since everything else is pretty much simple and direct. which is why despite the fact that i quite enjoyed it i still have a gripe - for something so straightforward it needlessly dragged too much.

buried
buried is impressive due to you know, the moviemaker's self-applied limitations. but from a moviewatcher's perspective, i don't really care, what matters is the entertainment value. so ultimately, this movie regardless of how awe-inspiring it should be to me due to how difficult it was to pull off and how many political injustice obviousness it pointed out, didn't entertain me. and the ending *eyes rolling a perfect semicircle* i assume was written in to seem clever and avoid being cliche, but in 2010 it IS cliche. i understand the need to avoid a hollywood ending and maintain 'artistic credibility', but to me a story should flow as well as the story could, and in this case the ending in my honest opinion, felt very contrived. van wilder did good though.

scott pilgrim vs. the world
quite well made. the old school video game elements are heartwarming and all but overall it was pretty boring.

unstoppable
good action flick, and like any good action flick it didn't waste too much time not being an action flick. in short, the pacing was perfect. it was so dedicated to being an action flick that the back stories (usually utilized to give the illusion of character depth and evoke empathy from the crowd) of the two main characters were established mostly through a hurried conversation made up of forced summaries as if they were in a rush to rescue whatever town the railway track ran through from a rogue freight train full of explosive chemicals. after all, they were in a rush, to rescue, whatever town the railway track ran through, from a rogue freight train, full of explosive chemicals. i don't mind this at all, every action movie should be more like this, 5 minutes max to introduce him and him and him or her, this and that, and we're off.

skyline
i had formed an expectation prior to watching this one due to foolishly reading a review. so i was looking forward to a so-bad-it's-good affair, unintentionally funny everything but overall fun experience. i was disappointed, it didn't reach a sufficient amount of any extreme whether positive or negative to be entertaining, the movie was straddling along the line of mediocrity unable to incite anything from me. it felt like it was made for tv, for a channel that i won't be viewing, not even as a brief transit while on a stereotypically male journey of needless multiple channel browsing. but who am i to judge, i shouldn't say anything since i dozed off momentarily halfway through, decided without a whim of a doubt to just walk away and drive home. that was saying something though.

megamind
would have had a greater impact if it wasn't for the concept of adorable villains being already introduced earlier this year, softening the blow. for some reason i felt it just didn't have that extra enough to have an emotional effect because seriously if the storyline had been structured a bit better and the characters just a bit more endearing, it could have been magical. on the other hand, magical is exactly how i would describe viewing it in 3d because in this sense it delivered beautifully. if every 3d motion picture looked like this i would think less than twice about investing in 3d contact lenses.

and another thing i truly have to thank the makers of this for - i have never understood the appeal of jonah hill to movie producers but in this one jonah hill who always plays jonah hill was treated exactly how jonah hill of any incarnation should be treated, as a zero. from now on i don't want to see jonah hill in any other form of predicament onscreen, if only we could also somehow pigeonhole jay baruchel into roles that share the same fate.

hachiko: a dog's story
simple and touching. richard gere and that dog, good acting.